Entries in Asian carp
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Burr Edde III of Malta Bend became Missouri’s most recent record-breaking angler when he landed a giant blue catfish on a stretch of the Missouri River in Saline County using a trotline. The new “alternative method” record blue catfish caught by Edde on March 21 weighed 120 pounds, 8 ounces, with a length of 55 and 1/8 inches and a girth of 45 inches.

Edde used cut Asian carp as bait.

The giant broke the previous alternative-method state-record blue catfish of 117 pounds caught in 1964 on the Osage River.

Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) staff verified the record-weight fish on March 25 using a certified scale at Bass Pro corporate headquarters in Springfield. The fish was preserved on ice for official weighing.

“Oh my goodness! That’s a big fish,” Edde recalled when he first saw the giant. “How am I going to get this one into the boat?! It was definitely an experience of a lifetime to catch one that big. I was blessed. And there are still lots of them out there!”

The longtime angler said he would have liked to release the record fish or donate it to the fish tanks at Bass Pro, but it didn’t survive long enough. “It’s too big to actually have mounted, but I’m getting a replica made.”

Slowly but surely, the public is awakening to the value of Asian carp as food.

And what possibly could go better with a carpburger than mussel beer?

More specifically, a Milfoil Lakehouse Saison Ale, brewed with zebra mussel shells and Eurasian watermilfoil by Excelsior Brewing Co. on Lake Minnetonka. The beer with the “exotic, invasive flavor” is promoted as a way to heighten public awareness about the problems caused by exotic species.

This past fall, Grumpy’s Limited Action Beer Fest challenged breweries to develop beer using only Minnesota ingredients, and Excelsior decided it wanted to push the envelope. It blended Minnesota wild rice, Minnetonka honey, and local hops with a small dollop of aquatic hitchhikers.

“We thought, ‘We’re going to take this to the extreme,’” said Paul Awad, a spokesman for the brewery. “It ended up being a really great beer.”

He explained that only tiny amounts of milfoil and mussel shells were used, and filtering prevents beer drinkers from finding a trace of the ingredients in their glasses. “Neither of them adds a lot of flavor. It’s more the novelty of it,” he said, adding that the brew tastes like many Saisons, with fruity, spicy overtones.

Ryan Anderson from MNbeer.com wasn’t particularly surprised by the mussel/milfoil beer. “There are some breweries out there trying some crazy things,” he said.

For example, seaweed as an added ingredient is becoming more common, while other micro breweries are trying things like fish bladders and oyster shells.

“It’s definitely a kind of interesting thing,” he said of the Excelsior beer. “But stranger things have happened.”

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the Department of Natural Resources said the exotic brew “sounds really unusual.”

Before this latest offering, Excelsior already created beers that honored its lakeside location, including Big Island Blond Ale. Additionally, 1 percent of its profits support the popular fishery via donations to organizations such as the Freshwater Society.

Meanwhile, in the Cafeteria . . .

The University of Missouri is testing recipes and gathering reactions as it considers adding the invasive Asian carp to the menu in its dining halls.

About 40 students tried different recipes using the fish during recent taste tests at the Sabai Culinary Development Kitchen on the Missouri campus, and their reactions will help the culinary staff decide whether to serve the fish.

Years ago, Missouri wildlife managers decided to reduce an exploding deer population in a St. Louis suburb. But instead of culling the herd humanely, they bowed to pressure from animal lovers, and, at great expense, trapped and moved deer to a more rural area.

Follow-up research revealed that those deer died of starvation. They had grown so accustomed to eating tulips, roses, and other domesticated plants that they did not recognize wild forage.

Besides showing the folly of trying to manage wildlife by emotion instead of science, this example reveals one of the reasons that exotic species can become so prolific and troublesome in their new habitats. Native species do not see them as food, and, consequently, their populations are free to grow unchecked by predation.

Down in the Caribbean, divers are trying to do something about that by teaching sharks to eat invasive lionfish. The latter are gobbling up native species, especially reef fish.

“From a scientific point of view, we don't know how successful the project is. But, apparently, recent videos show native top predators are starting to eat lionfish without them being previously speared by divers,” says a marine biologist. (Go here to see some great photos of sharks eating lionfish.)

Meanwhile, lionfish populations have declined around Jamaica because another species is eating the invaders --- man.

Dayne Buddo, a Jamaican marine ecologist who focuses on marine invaders at the Caribbean island's University of the West Indies, attributes much of the local decrease in sightings to a growing appetite for their fillets. He says that Jamaican fishermen are now selling lionfish briskly at markets. In contrast, a few years ago island fishermen "didn't want to mess" with the exotic fish with spines that can deliver a very painful sting.

The same strategy eventually may help us control Asian carp in the nation’s rivers and impoundments. Go here to check out my post about that.

Havana, Ill., is Ground Zero for the Asian carp invasion, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. On the Illinois River, it’s about 200 miles south of Lake Michigan and 120 miles north of the Mississippi.

Based on electrofishing surveys, bighead and silver carp now account for about 60 percent of the fish biomass in that stretch of the river. That means native species have declined dramatically because the exotics outcompete them for food and habitat.

And peaceful boat rides are a thing of the past because of silver carp, which go airborne when startled.

“People have been hit and seriously injured,” says DNR’s Matt O’Hara. “I know there have been some cases of broken noses and jaws.

“Pretty distressing when you come out here and you’re looking for native fish, and all you see is invasive Asian carp,” he adds.

A recent study by University of Notre Dame researchers suggests that consequences of an Asian carp invasion into the Great Lakes may not be as catastrophic as many fear.

“If bighead and silver carp were to establish in Lake Erie, local fish biomass is not likely to change beyond observations recorded in the last three decades,” the university said in a press release about the findings.

Scientists pointed out, however, that the study mainly highlights the uncertainty, adding that the walleye population could decrease by as little as 10 percent or as much as 40.

“The range of possibilities concerning walleye biomass shows that the potential effect to this species is highly uncertain,” said Roger Cooke, one of the study’s authors.

But what’s happening right now in Kentucky Lake and many more of the nation’s bass fisheries along major rivers is not theory. It’s reality. The exotic fish are there in massive numbers. For example, a first-of-its kind commercial tournament on Barkley and Kentucky Lakes last year netted 82,953 pounds of bighead and silver carp --- that’s more than 40 tons--- in just two days.

And this reality does not bode well for the future of sport fishing.

“If we don’t do something, bass fishing will be over with in five to ten years. You won’t be able to run a bass boat on many of these waters,” said J.D. Johnson, owner of Gulf Pride Seafood.

“If people don’t wake up, we might as well hang it up.”

Working with Carp Management Group of America LLC, Johnson is at the forefront of an effort to garner both angler and financial support for commercial harvest of carp. And he’s not alone.

B.A.S.S. National Conservation Director Gene Gilliland also supports the effort, as do fisheries chiefs in Kentucky and Tennessee.

“Fishermen need to get behind this idea of commercial netting,” Gilliland said. “It’s the only viable solution until someone develops a magic pill.”

“We have to do something now before our lakes and rivers become so over-populated with Asian carp that our native fish never will be able to make a comeback,” said Tennessee’s Bobby Wilson.

“We may not be able to eliminate Asian carp by this method. But the goal is to reduce their numbers so that they will not have a significant impact on our native species of fish.”

Kentucky’s Ron Brooks added that the carp pose a dire threat to “the very base of the aquatic food pyramid” because they feed on phytoplankton and zooplankton, primary forage for newborn bass, crappie, and other sport fish.

The invaders pose that threat because of their massive appetites and huge numbers. A carp eats 5 to 20 percent of its body weight each day as it grows to an average weight of 30 to 40 pounds. A female can lay hundreds of thousands of eggs at a time, and she can do so multiple times annually.

Even knowing all this, however, some bass anglers likely are shaking their heads and saying that they don’t want nets in their waters. But Gilliland said commercial harvest does not harm sport fisheries --- even when gillnets are used.

Most significantly, however, gillnets aren’t the best way to harvest Asian carp, according to Johnson. “We call it ‘strike fishing’ and we’ve done it for years with mullet,” he said.

Schooling fish are encircled by net, driven inward, and quickly harvested. No nets are left unattended to snag whatever swims by.

“I can put 900 feet of net down to 200 feet in less than a minute,” Johnson said.

He added that he could send 575 metric tons of carp to Asian each year, if only the facilities were available to process them. Right now, though, harvested carp are used mostly for fertilizer and silage, and that’s not profitable enough to sustain an aggressive commercial fishery.

“We know that commercial fishermen can catch them, and we know that there is a market for them overseas, as well as within the United States. The missing pieces are the processing plants and the price per pound for commercial fishermen.”